


Fair is Foul

by cyanocorax



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanocorax/pseuds/cyanocorax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“It is a blessing,” she murmurs, “for dreams to be visited by fire.”</i> Pre-ASoS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fair is Foul

She arrives at the witching hour, empty-handed.

In the darkness, an ache still heavy upon his eyes, he thinks for a moment that perhaps it is Selyse, come to offer him another complaint about her uncles, or to tempt him to her bed. She has been full of much talk of heirs lately, has Selyse, but thus far it has only been talk. She thinks perhaps now that he is a king, and she a queen, they will be blessed with a son—a queer line of reasoning if ever he heard one. All kingship has given him thus far is grief.

He makes to send her away, until the shadow moves into light and he smells ash and boiled blood, and stays his his hand.

Her cowl has been pulled up over her head, and the whiteness of her face is distant, as the moon behind a cloud. “My lady,” he says, and she smiles, touches the back of his head, the crown.

“Do you still dream, my king?”

“I do not sleep.”

Melisandre’s fingertips, warm as embers, find the hollows of his cheeks and hold his frame steady, like pale thin buttresses. “It is a blessing,” she murmurs, “for dreams to be visited by fire.” And then, when he has no rebuke, “Come.”

 

 

 

Two moons ago he may still have asked where it was she was taking him, made demands. As things lie now, he lets her do all the talking. She whispers about Alester Florent, how soon it will be time for him to step aside, mentions Shireen in passing, mentions his wife. Opens a door, shows him through. They are moving down, into the dungeons, and the air has grown thick and warm and dry.

Last night it had been upwards in the cold autumn wind to the top of the mount, and she had bathed the two of them in smoke, told him secrets in Valyrian she said he would one day learn to understand.

Still he feels very much as if he is living within another man’s skin.

Now he watches her whisper a word to the guard, glance over her shoulder. The guard kneels, murmurs his courtesies, and lets them through the iron gate. The steps are all uneven, roughly hewn, but Melisandre takes them without so much as a downwards glance, sure in her own survival.

He has begun to perspire. His collar clings to his neck and when he touches the wall, he finds his palms leave damp imprints upon the stone.

Another guard. This one nearly tumbles over in the act of genuflection. Melisandre helps him to his feet again, one hand upon his chest. “It is wearisome work,” she tells him, “this duty,” and her eyes find Stannis, linger.

This is the last corridor, he thinks. The last stair. The castle can go no deeper without meeting with the fire below. She has stopped him outside a cell, and he can hear within the rustle of cloth and the faint sound of lapping water, a man’s voice, an unnatural murmur of breath.

He had not known there was anyone in his dungeon.

“Who…”

She passes a torch before the door of the cell, and for an instant, he sees one shape bent over another, outlined in red. Maester Pylos, from the look of the first, and—

“You see?” Melisandre murmurs. “The fire is merciful.”

 _It is nothing of the kind_ , he thinks, but a little of the tightness in his chest makes its way from him all the same. “Why is he here?”

“To avert an inconvenience. And the dungeons are warm. It will quicken his recovery.” He watches as Pylos looks up at them from time to time, unsure as to what he should do, wary of Melisandre and fearful of his king. Or perhaps the other way around. Stannis finds he does not quite know anything the way he used to.

“Your knight of onions,” Melisandre is telling him, hand upon his arm. “Would you call him a violent man, my king?”

“No, I would not.”

Her red eyes are upon his again, good-humored, and unafraid. “Then it will surprise you to know that I saw death in his heart when I gazed into the flames. My death.”

He turns away from her, grinding his teeth. Perhaps it does surprise him, but only in some facets. In others he wonders why it had not occurred to Davos sooner— after Cressen died, or Renly, or Penrose. _How do you sleep at night, my lady_ , he wishes to ask her; _How do you rest with the stain of death upon your soul?_

Instead he steps forward, letting her fingers slip loose of his arm, and enters the cell. Pylos rises, bows, the bowl of water in his hands trembling as he moves. Stannis watches him for a moment, taking in the youthful lines of his face, before dismissing him.

In the squares of light cast by the torch, he can make out only the crudest outlines of Davos Seaworth’s face. A knotted brow, a pair of tightly shut eyes. A neck bare of the twine that once looped around it.

“You should have told me sooner. You overreach—”

“I do simply what is needed.” She sweeps in beside him and kneels, sets one of her hands upon either side of Davos’s face—as she has frequently done with Stannis, before she blesses him, before she kisses him—and bows her head, as if in prayer. “Don’t worry, my king,” Melisandre says, laughter and song in the tones of her voice. “I would never let harm come to that which is yours.”

Stannis Baratheon, for all the heat of the cell, feels a chill crawl from the base of his skull to the small of his back, and shudders. Other men, he knows, would have called the look in her eyes seductive, but all he sees is hunger, and power, and thirst.

“He won’t agree to it,” he tells her. The air is filled with the smell of flesh. Of Davos, he supposes, and his sweat and his sick. Ordinarily it would repulse him. Ordinarily he would not even be here at all. He watches her pale thumbs rub circles into Davos’s skin, painting runes; he watches the rise and fall of the other man’s chest and the silent movement of his lady’s lips.

“Perhaps not,” Melisandre says at long last, rising, withdrawing. “But I must try.”

Momentarily he finds himself picturing it—their bodies in congruence, her mouth upon his throat, her warm, white fullness pushing against Davos’s hard, thin frame, the heavy sound of her breath.

Stannis looks up, chest thrumming, to find her smiling at him again. As if she knows.

_No doubt she does._

She shakes her skirts free of dust, and departs.

 

 

 

When she finds him again the sun has begun to rise, and he is standing atop Sea Dragon Tower, a cold ocean breeze beating the scent and heat of the dungeons out from his lungs.

“R’hllor has blessed us with another dawn,” she says.

Stannis hears Maester Cressen’s voice as it was many years ago, when he was still a young boy with fixed notions of truth, telling him it was the turn of the sphere that made the sun come and go as it did, as it does. He hears his mother singing to the Seven in the sept of Storm’s End, and the wind in the leaves of the heart tree. He hears Davos Seaworth, saying it was the gods they burned that his people knew, loved, worshipped. Above it all he hears _her_ —the sound of her speech, and her skin, and her smile. So many gods. So many ways to turn. So many names for a wall he has yet to see past in full.

The ocean moves in handfuls and spirals, carrying winter as it bursts upon the shore.

“There’s much to be done,” he murmurs.

The red woman only nods, only takes his hand.

He lets her lead him down.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess i accidentally ot3'd.


End file.
